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A Podcast series from the PGR Community at the School of Language, Literature, Music, and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen.
For more on Shane Strachan, see www.shanestrachan.com
[00:00:03] This podcast is brought to you by the University of Aberdeen. Hello and welcome to episode nine in series two from the Library, a podcast brought to you by the School of Language, Literature, music and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen. What I see across the research students in creative writing, and I'm co-hosting today's episode with Shalini Vinod. Hi. Hi M And hello again to everyone listening, I'm Shalimar, I'm a second year scholar. I'm doing an interdisciplinary study with creative writing and sociology, and our guest today is Dr. Shane Stratton, recently appointed as a lecturer in creative writing here at the University of Aberdeen. He graduated with a PhD from the University in 2015, following the creation of a short fiction collection focussed on the decline of the fishing industry in Northeast Scotland and its impact on language and community. His current National Library of Scotland, Scott Scrivener, writing new book in Doric, inspired by the national collections as well as a creative non-fiction book, nevertheless sparking tales in Bulawayo, his stories and poems have appeared in New Writing Scotland Not Words Now Gutter Stand and other national literary magazines and anthologies. He has also staged work for the National Theatre of Scotland and following the award of Scottish Book Trust's Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2018. He exhibited has spoken word project the Bill Giblin in Aberdeen Art Gallery across 2020 2021. So welcome, Shane. Thanks for having me. Yes. Second, that welcome. And just to dive straight into it, I guess a good place to start might be to cast your mind back to the distant days of 2015 and just ask if you could tell us a little bit more about your project and how you think that might have shaped your writing practice and and yourself as a writer just going forward from from there? Yeah, I'm sure to cast it even further back to 2011 when I started and it came off the back of doing the Masters in creative writing first, and I had this desire to kind of keep having the framework and structure of university.
[00:02:28] And I had and obviously a kind of academic research interests around particularly nasty Scots news and Doric, my work, and it was of like a bit of a puzzle that was trying to work around what's the best way to make Northeast Scots successful, maybe for readers elsewhere that have never heard the dialect, and what different styles or approaches could I take to present in language on the page? And so that was kind of the big question I had for my research and why I would continue into PhD alongside representing the community that came from fishing communities and that sense of the kind of the changes and and the language and the dialect and being affected by the kind of decline of the fishing industry and how that impacted on the people in my family, our livelihoods, our choices in life and how we spoke. So. So you came from a fishing background? Yeah. Okay. Yes. So I grew up in Fraserburgh and we had so I spoke Doric and do still speak on Talk of the Coast which a lot more now and I yeah. So I, I got to be a writer from a young age and I, but I never really wrote stories and Scots are thought to write in Scots really until I came to university and read the likes of Classic Gibbon and Kalman and that. So I think for me find my voice. It kind of happened at university, so I couldn't imagine like quite letting go of that and going off after the Masters. I think I needed more time so that the PhD was really useful in terms of I know so quite young. I start my PhD, I think at 23 years old. So I have still maybe a little bit immature, voice wise, writing wise.
[00:04:11] So it just keeping those extra years to keep getting support and advice and having the time to build my craft and also getting started at work published. And I think if I hadn't done it, I would have not be the point out of my career now. It would have taken a lot longer to get my work out there and take a lot longer to get things written. So having that structured deadline, Yeah, yeah. In a sense and have a knock at damage framework actually, and reflexive framework was really important to get me to be aware of what I'm right and why am I right in it in a way that I think a lot of writers say to that context maybe aren't reflecting on their practice in that way about the timing and the way an artist routine writing an art statement. What what's your work about? I think a lot of writers just write and then send off and then they're after a bio and they've got to think, Oh, okay, other than what I've done, publish it and those kind of things, what do I actually write about? And it can be a bit of a shock to the system. So I was working all that out during the PhD and needed the support to get to where I'm at now. So yeah, it was a really formative experience for me. In many ways. But actually, you know, I never thought I would do a Ph.D. I didn't really know what PGD was until I was doing it. To be honest with you, we're all still trying to figure it out. So, yeah, it's it's one of those things like coming for phase two as well. Going to uni itself was always I only applied to poverty like everything felt like a big step.
[00:05:38] So it was really transformative in terms of changing my perceptions of myself and what was possible creatively, academically. So having more time with thought was great. So helping it, helping you to find your voice and establish that voice. Yes. Which is a very strong and distinctive voice. So it's it's really lovely listening to how much you've done at such a young age. I'm sure it's going to inspire a lot of people. And how, you know, other than being a creative writer, you're looking at it as being an artist and personally for myself, being a dancer, practising, sketching. I recently read about your Grampian Hospital Arts Trust project. Would you be able to tell us a little more about it? Yeah, that was something that I been working on over the last few years to put it up this post. It finished up at the start last year and I was approached by a group in hospitals art shows to work on a project called Shared Collective Heritage, which was a way for them to kind of connect with the 30 years they've had of putting artworks into hospitals and try to find a not active across that to being a writer and almost as a consultant and as well as helping them find an art for it kind of how have they brought communities together, artistic communities, the medical community together. I also was creating new work in response to the artworks and getting communities to do that, and whether that be through a kind of wellbeing focus or kind of for people to pass the time waiting in the waiting room so that they can kind of focus on that instead of worrying about their loved ones. And, and I love looking at visual art to inspire, particularly poetry, trained me up.
[00:07:19] I would say I'm not somewhat of a crusader, but when it comes to I get commissioned a lot to write poems and then I like career to start and portrays concrete. It's visual and also the sound and all that is really important as well, especially written in Doric. But you know, just that inspiration, a starting point. I often will look at paintings or photographs or, you know, go for a walk and, you know, taking a census and things. So being able to do that process with people in the hospital space, including staff or business patients, that was kind of a focus, but it started before the pandemic. Yeah, a lot of that ended up having to happen online and was what was one of the last places you could re-enter for a long time. So it was quite disrupted, but it was one of the few projects where I've worked with communities and with another another discipline in the mix as well. So it was it's quite nice to be asked to do that. It was the thing I applied for. I think it was building on other things and I was kind of approached by someone I'd worked with before. I, I previously worked to operating say Cancels Creative Learning Team, which was the first year behind offering a PhD. So it was all kind of a culmination of a few things that have come out of working in a multi-disciplinary way. And yeah, visual arts tends to be the one I come back to a lot. But yeah, dance with dancers of art with positions and things. And I think it's just, yeah, I never imagined it when I was doing my piece for that or before that point that I would work across disciplines and it has really become a big part of my practice that not everything is about being published.
[00:08:52] Yeah, you can engage people in other ways. Yeah. Making it more multidimensional and yeah, fluid I suppose. Yeah. And learning from other artistic practices. When I've worked with visual artists, I've worked a theatre project with a visual artist and we were brought together through the National Theatre Scotland, through this thing called One Day to Play, and we just had to come up with a piece of theatre that was connected to both our practices and we went around and listened in on people's conversations and I listened to people's conversations as she drew people. And then we presented what we, what she saw in my heart and how these might interlink or not. And we watched each other how we developed to practice. So I actually ended up chopping up what I heard into the way that she painted by art in detail. So I did a line of dialogue, it seemed, and she would add a line on the page. Slowly the picture would build up and I would return to the same conversations and I did more of the dialogue. So it actually made me change how I would ever have written a piece of text by mimicking how she worked as a visual artist. So Soundscape Yeah, we ended up with a musician who actually use soundscapes. That was on today. The movie did again because we were able to work to that our long version with the National Theatre after that. So yeah, I've learned a lot from other people, such as at Practices, but also learned about how to navigate my career through other disciplines. I mean, I think there's a lot to learn from visual arts in particular. They've got probably the hardest job to sustain themselves. Because they've got to buy materials and things.
[00:10:23] But as writers look away, we don't have to have those kind of expenses on top of try to produce sparkle at the time. So yeah, it's, it's, it's never what I expected to be doing when I was just, you know, writing my short stories about the fish community that I'd end up doing this for. I think it's just, you know, having a creative practice means you're a creative person and you can apply yourself in in different ways. You're evolving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you get braver trying these things once you've done a few. Yeah. I like the idea about not limiting yourself as the idea of a writer is like someone comes to over the desk getting the script in the right time, you know, when the muse strikes, etc.. But what you've done is much broader than that. And that reminds me of the Bill Give exhibition, which I call in 2019, and that that involved fashion poetry, performance podcast. And I wondered if that experimentation that you just described as it was like a conscious decision or is it just exposure to different other practitioners, creative practitioners, and it's just something that's kind of developed? Yeah, it was it was an interesting evolution for that one because initially I actually wrote a story about fellowship and my PhD as a short story, and it was a nice way to just for listeners who don't have a book, it might be, Can we give a little quick? Yeah, I didn't do that. A quick summary, if you will give was an Yeah. So I actually wrote a story about Belgium. I'm a Ph.D. in Belgium as someone from Fraserburgh, from my hometown who went on to be a massive fashion designer in the 1970s and, you know, dressed the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Bianca Jagger, Twiggy, who was one of his best friends, and so and so and he was a farming background.
[00:12:06] So I, I was writing a lot of these fishing community stories, and I kind of want to take up that, you know, I want to do something slightly different, but still be connected to Doric or place or linking with elsewhere. So I wrote a story about him then, and I had this interest and encouragement to write more about him for a longer work. So that was kind of a seed was planted during that. Then I followed up with the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Opportunity came up and I applied to do a to potentially a novel length project about his life because that hadn't been done and I felt like I was in a good position to do it. And being someone who thought I was a queer person from the same town. And so, yeah, I got I went to France and I, I worked for a month there and tough time to write, but I was also actually there alongside some Swedish and Finnish artists and writers and research into the originally interested things and working in different forms. And I kept writing these poems to try and kind of showcase that his fashion shows felt like prose wasn't enough, an art to be, poetry of music to in some sense, and a rhythm and a beat. So ultimately ended up that it was going to be impossible to make the book work because there was too many gaps in his story and it felt wrong to falsify. I don't think his family would have been happy, maybe who I've been working with in interviewing. So to keep it celebratory but also creative interest to me, I really ended up focussed on the poems and what I've been doing with it was has actually taking on different voices to capture different perspectives.
[00:13:45] And I changed my accent dialect, a spoken word way to be fashion reviewers are to be him or to be critics and so on and models, so that actually the thought to do that came out of the bus shelter project because I was changing my voice to match people. I was in the street. So I had been used to this code switching, which I've been doing my whole life, actually switching into other people's languages, dialects. And I found there is a kind of energy to doing that. So the project evolved into a spoken word film and podcast, and I ended up working with students at a school of art because I wanted to learn about fashion and then look again at festival, got in touch saying, Can you, you know, create something for an exhibition space? And that. So my work tended to get pulled into being submitted for them and then successful in the way that they came to see it and said can we have it? And the comedy and just how these things evolve. It goes for our our short story ten years ago and I ended up with an art exhibition essentially. So you really don't know where will you get a piece? You'll take your ideas and the seeds are planted with connections you make, how it will build. But it helps with, I think with fellowships or gain awarded, things can attract attention to get other people to then want a piece of that or get involved with it. It's like one has yeah grew arms legs and part of their commission since and from phenytoin and things for smaller poetry commissions for dresses they are and so and we're working on a book an academic collection. From a symposium which the poems may appear to not.
[00:15:24] And that's kind of in the proposal stage right now. So it never ends, like with that project, and it could evolve again in the future. But for now on, HARP, it is still a work in progress. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it's just a story that really resonates with me, so I can't really ever let go of it. It's interesting how you're speaking about code switching and fashion and all of this coming together and code switching is also sort of very relevant in today's sort of multicultural world where people, different languages, dialects are coming together and code switching is becoming an everyday use term of how language is evolving and not kind of set. So coming down to what you've been speaking about, installation and spoken word, could you tell our listeners a little more about the spoken word installation and how this has been interpreted in terms of your creative practice? Yes, I think the Belga project was the first kind of experiment for me around how do you bring poetry into an exhibition space? How do you present it as an installation? So that was great because I had the students who create the work that we could display alongside Bill Gibb's work by also the printed poems on Textiles. And I had the film which could be heard, but I've done another installation since, which was about oil and gas, and I was commissioned by our curator who works with artists or writer artists to reflect Aberdeen's relationship with oil and gas. So I wrote this piece called Creepin, which is about 12 minutes long, and it's from the perspective of oil at who's Aberdeen's Northeast Sugar Daddy. And it was a sado masochistic kind of thing going on with Aberdeen and how we had this boom and bust and reward and risk kind of economy so that I ended up actually creating a sculpture for them and create an artwork.
[00:17:17] And it was a sound piece that was playing as well. As you enter this dark space with these luminous plastic objects that are made from oil and that represent it like, you know, the oil is often invisible and hidden. And that was kind of part of the project was how do you make oil visible? So actually giving it a voice and the sound side, but then a physical presence and these yellow objects that glowed under UV light because that's how you can find oil spills on beaches, that's using UV light and things. So it was yeah, it pushed me to think, you know, I did feel a little bit like I've cheated my way into getting to be an artist for a few months. And then I was like, Well, I could do this. Like I've seen other artworks. And after doing that I'm like, Oh, what is that? Or, you know, the usual. But I felt like it made sense to do it and to create an atmosphere. And I mean, otherwise I would happily work with an artist and commission them to, to create something that fits my piece. But that one felt like it made sense to just, you know, be supported by the curator to see what I could achieve myself. But yeah, it turns out I don't really like painting random objects. Yeah, never thought I'd do that as a writer. It's a good thing to find out. I just. Yeah, Yeah, it's great hearing you talk because I think the term writer and academic is way too restrictive a term for you. Definitely. To a creative practitioner, aren't you? Didn't writing forms one part of that? Yeah. But going back to the writing, Derek, like you were talking about, come from the Northeast and the Northeast fishing community and how that's a central part of your identity, who you are, and I guess just the natural way that you creatively express yourself.
[00:19:01] And I wondered how you've seen have you seen, you know, attitudes towards Doric in the written and spoken word change over the since you did you say decade or so, doesn't it. But yeah, I think that's been a really fascinating thing. I've a come along a time where everything's changed sort of on perceptions of Scots language and tonic and opportunities as well. And I think what was interesting about the piece was I was thinking, you know, I grew up with a sense of the fading ness of all in the sense that it was going away. And then. Julian, you know, and I was writing stories connected up at the same time that's happening. You've got the government suddenly put money into schools, promote it, and. And so I was being asked to go into schools and be the direct gruffalo and all this stuff, which is also the things you do as a writer to pay the bills like the Gruffalo. I was wearing a costume one time for for that. So and yeah, and so doing the Ph.D., it was about, you know, how do I make this more accessible? I was right and maybe more along the middle of the spectrum when I was kind of blending and more anglicised or accessible version of Doric and the given style for that project. I wasn't raised strictly and strong Nazi Scots. What is now I've recently been encouraged or commissioned to create work that's not exclusively in Scots, and I didn't imagine that would be happening. When I see my Ph.D., I thought it was more of I want people to kind of. I understand this while they still have maybe some sense of what Scott says, I don't think Scott will ever go away.
[00:20:38] But I just mean in terms of my perception of the Scott's that I spoke, my community was going almost a fringe, a fringe guy that nobody knew about. Well, no, I think Doric is well perceived. Well, no, I just I guess, I mean, just within certain nuances of it go like this, you know, fishing communities, specific worries and languages and but yeah, in terms of Doric it's like a big brand now and you know it's contentious sometimes within Scots language speak community because this kind of feel like Doric speakers have that Doric exceptionalism or something around it and there's kind of actually a celebratory nature in Doric, what is maybe sometimes a more contentious discussion and debate around Scott's language, that Doric is being a label, it's not attached to a nationalist or anything, kind of sidesteps maybe that it's quite interesting how that all plays together and what is in my work, you know, is probably about connecting with the Northeast region and so Doric is the way I would do that, but I have been commissioned to write more General Scott's pieces and and how do you find that just. Speaking in native Doric is one of about two and then going into a broader so well it's often the portrays more what I've been asked to do with kind of wider Scots pieces. So I have the Commission to do something of it. Walter Scott And he didn't exclusively use the North-East Scots, he, but he would use different dialects to represent different cars from different areas. So for his I think was the Turner 50th anniversary year, I, I did a piece, inspired one of his short stories and I use a lot of the Scots force used in that for the poem.
[00:22:22] And I've done other things like go through the Scots language dictionaries and find interest. The descriptions of foxes and stuff that look up to word told, which is the Scots word, and then find in other words, I didn't know that I could then use to collage together a poem and a more kind of general Scots or older, even older Scots forms that maybe don't exist. I mean, the way that kind of retirement did and would have been seen as artificial or synthetic Scots, but. At times it could have been spoken or could have been used by a speaker, hypothetically. So I think you can do that in poetry. I think it's harder to do that in True Explorers is more connected to realism in how people really talk. And I've noticed with translation being asked to do I got to do things for schools, for children, translating fairy tales and and, you know, you think, how do I make it? And my sisters read some of the stories that other folk have written that really strongly translate. Well, that's not how we speak. And I'm like, Well, maybe they speak it like, not for me. Just yeah, it's just OCD. Yeah. So it's it's interesting how perceptions change. I think awareness and validity to the language is really growing. I'm going to be speaking to the Parliament Cross parliamentary group next week for Scots language. And so, you know, relations across parliamentary, across all the political spectrum. They are interested in supporting Scots as maybe something that yeah, I just couldn't imagine it being the case 15, 20 years ago when I was being told at school to not speak. It was strange and it's great that it has continued to flourish. So on that you're going to read a poem for us that you performed it live with the cellist Aileen Sweeney.
[00:24:11] And we were 20, 22. Yeah, the composer was Hélene, and the cellist is Emilie Dysmorphia. So I have a different foot behind each part, which is interesting. Do you want to talk about the poem? You want to go ahead and I'll say a little bit just to introduce that. It's that this was actually a multi-disciplinary project when I worked for The Textile Artist as she stitched these haikus onto and weavings that were hung up around the city and we actually installed it just before lockdown. And then it ended up being something people could walk around on their daily walk to help have something to look out on. So these are little haikus inspired by the things that I love about operating and and the terms of them being haikus, two seasons to nature and the passage of time. So. So yeah, I call it the Doric to arms. I meant to log into. My gravity's reached the city. A breeze flutters roon alley Aberdeen's cobbled streets pink petal rain Summer is here we are fight sheet hard to blanket us. We've I was at the bus we passed us to at rats. Priscilla leaves and the golden girl and the scar escaped. Folks 13 on the call Winter street low Yalla sun. Thorne Waterfall and John Stink Air Jordans. We cross the bridge to get that. The crews are doing echo through the tunnel now to new. He rushed past the fast and pack in hard. Nancy And this, too, shall pass. My car will Gloucester and the darkest hooked on it. If you just let it. It's a beautiful poem, Shaina. Well, like about it is you've mentioned, you know, lockdown and the captured the stillness of that I think in the poem and the way you read it, especially the whole sense of stillness that we all had during the pandemic, the little details that we all found solace in.
[00:26:29] I think that's that's all the way through. The poem is really lovely. Thank you. This, too, shall pass. It came out so really, you know, that's something everyone should hold on to. Everything will just pass. Good or bad? Yeah. I mean, actually, before any lockdown happened, it just was just about, you know, the struggle of being in Aberdeen some time through the winter, I think. And then it just ended up being so, you know, relevant to their walks. They happened to kind of keep it not, you know, dark days. But there was a glimmer of hope if you look for that sort of thing. So, yeah, I think it's interesting for somebody who's new to direct to hear all of this work around Derek. I mean, even more casual reader, social media celebrities and things doing sort of preserving of, you know, funny content and Derek's it's it's really interesting. Yeah, I think I think one of the pool are draw to it if you think of it things like artificial intelligence and you know people being able to just type in things in the story, I think, you know, everything is becoming genetic with globalisation or anything like that. The speed of things which I think people are turning to, what makes us different sometimes linguistically and celebrating that, not how that's connected to our identities. But I did go and chat TVT the other day and type in Clear Poem in Doric and actually I was coming up with some Doric words and it made sense. It was, it was rubbish, like everything, but the fact it was actually spelt and things like fit rather than another Scots, you know, just General Scots, Wecht or whoever was surprised. And so I was like, okay, it can't because Google Translate can't do, Scots can't do Doric, but Gbtc, which I think it is, it can be another podcast altogether.
[00:28:09] It's scary. Intellectual property rights, I mean anybody could be, Yeah. Oh well that was an election A was like wanting to write, you know, marketing someone's story or essay. And I think, you know, I can, I would be able to tell Stuart to do it because, because there's just something off about what comes out, you know, in terms of how the language is used. Just like when people use Google Translate and the translations never. Right. Yeah. You just have the sense that something's not right, obviously. But yeah, give it another ten years and you don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, we'll all be again. Films, debate exams. I don't know what to prove. It's real and yeah, but there is something about, you know, that's why I do think that especially, you know, looking at minority languages and dialects and, and tapping into that because there's things that aren't even in the Scots on the station. I mean, I finally see other communities see that aren't captured in those spaces. So that, you know, might still make things unique and different and interesting and constantly changing. And I guess all this is central as well to your hero with Scots Schiavo, with the National Library of Scotland. And could you tell us more about that, you know, the potential outputs from it and how you balance it or how it feeds into your your sort of academic research? You know, So, yes, I got awarded Scott's Cleaver for a year before I applied for the post, or at roughly the same time. It was all kind of happening before I joined the university and I'd actually applied for a few years. Gordon didn't get it, and I had thought it was not the right time.
[00:29:41] It came up this year that kind of shifted from being national Scots clever to moving around different regions that an Orkney Scots leaver last year was an assignment. Was that Aberdeenshire, Scots cleaver and it just was a no brainer not to apply for it and even thought that it would have potentially impacted on my commitment to my last job, which wasn't research based. I was a learning engagement manager for an arts charity so that it aligns so well with, you know, my right in practice. So it is my right in practice what I'm doing, and it's just worked out well. You know what I do? Aberdeen University is half teacher, half research contract. So for now a lot more research. Time has focussed on what I'm working on for screen, for which I probably am working on anyway without having Scott Cleaver thing attached to it. But to have the time to go down to Edinburgh and look at archives and connect with your Scots language, older Scots language material and be inspired to write new work from that is kind of the main focus and the project I'm doing is actually inspired by bollards that were from a biology photographer, woman from Old Aberdeen, and that were collected in the mid 18th century called Honour Gordon, also known as Mrs. Brown Falkland, and her ball ended up in Walter Scott's minstrelsy. So there's a lot of ties with the Walter Scott's Research Centre and with all Aberdeen she lived and humanity. Marks Her father was a philosophy lecturer at the university. On it. Marshall followed it with the reception institutions, one of them, and she lived in old Aberdeen. So it's just all feels like things have fallen into place for Scott Schriever and this, you know, taken on the light ship here and that my work that I'm creating isn't like, Oh, here's a ballad.
[00:31:28] I'm writing a story that's directly linked to it. I'm actually connecting it with my memories from my childhood where I find resonance with the ballot. And so it's basically about, you know, growing up in a fishing community and all the wild things that that entails, essentially. And it's a lot stronger Northeast Scots. And the truth is I did my Ph.D. because, you know, I've been given the kind of solidity and push to do that. And I read some of it for the first time on Friday at a queer spoken word night thing that was happening and called crack that was organised by a student and I swear by the festival and I was a bit nervous about, she did some of the work for the first time in action Creative non-fiction, because I haven't really written much autobiographical biographical work after my stories are kind of slightly a nugget of something from real life and then push in a different direction. So it's a bit more vulnerable sharing something. But I found that, like you can't not get the voices right because the voices in my memories, in my head, it is quite strange to perform it and it seemed to go down well. So I'm looking forward. I feel more confident in that as a project and that people will receive it. Well, at least the spoken word context will be interesting to see how you feel about it on the page in time. And and then I'm looking at other things I found just digging around in archives, other things that maybe inspire a poem or a kind of performance piece from a friend. A couple of poems inspired by petition letters around the Union of Parliaments that were kind of partly in Doric, partly in garlic, in English, open mouthed together, and kind of making those accessible to a wider audience by converting them into poems rather than the letters of saffron and key phrases using the collage process.
[00:33:17] I often do with 4 p.m. That's a big part of my practice other than writing from experience or and in the same way that, you know, I just I like to find inspiration from whatever because I feel, you know, after doing that, I think I scraped the bottom of fishing community stories with it. Apparently not, because now I'm writing a creative non-fiction book potentially. But yeah, it's been really great to be encouraged to and have the framework and structure for Scott Scribner to do that. And part of it is also promoting, you know, being the face of Scott's for a year. And as I've been going to awards and random, you know, Scott's Music awards, Scott's language awards, it's just like kind of a higher visibility profile for my own writing for Doric for Northeast Voices. I think it finishes up in summer that I'll probably work on my project a long time after that. It's just been a good starting point to get that going and to get my head around it is you've all been doing your fair share. You kind of work out, sort of have one year support it and that framework has been really helpful to map out what you mean. And yeah, can I just ask quickly if you were given free reign with the archive or or was a central component of it to be to working on these ballots, But this has been identified with the still identified books. I knew of them. The first part of your proposal? Yeah, I think I did not get my head around at one end to do this something. I use some ballads and songs at my Ph.D., so it's always comes back some snippets of things that are linked with stories.
[00:34:43] I just always had this concept of it returning to ballots and then reimagining them or resonating with them in contemporary times or writing about in the nineties right now, but trying to find parallels and you know, how how is the culture change or not changed between how people treat each other or gender or class? Like that's kind of what I'm interested in exploring and also how we use language because ballots actually are quite clever in that they, they take from other dialects or slightly anglicised themselves to fit rhymes and things. And so they actually are quite aesthetic pieces that actually they're not wanted to hear it being authentic to exactly how we speak, but actually see themselves as a work of art and an aesthetic thing. And I think that's how I like to view creative writing in the Scots as well, that you should have the opportunity to experiment and play around with how do you spell things that shouldn't be set in stone? And so there's a lot of potential through that. Brilliant. Thanks. That's great. That's very insane. Yeah. And speaking more about the academic side, I know that you've had you've been involved with medical humanities conferences, so how do you tend to respond to the questions of ethics and what are your thoughts about navigating differences and in sort of improving conversation between sort of different disciplines, which are sort of very distinct and to bridge that gap when it comes to humanities and sciences and to facilitate things being done at. But yet sort of being able to, you know, cross the hurdle of getting approvals and. Yeah, it's interesting. I think in terms of ethics, it's interesting as a creative writer because rules actually look like criteria. So, you know, they're using things verbatim and things.
[00:36:30] There's an ethical question around that because I think it's actually taking people's voices and then reshaping them. But and I mean, that's why I had to kind of push back against myself. I don't think that the Bill Gates project in going I don't feel comfortable making up someone's life story. Other people could and and certain people would be fine to do that with. But and it didn't feel right in that project to go down that route and taken verbatim. I would then, you know, have it within a creative practice. I do think around things like I need to know why is it I need to almost remove it from the place you wouldn't even know the sources and but also able state sources. So, you know, create the bill, get porn sort of. That's verbatim from actual reviews of his work that are and newspaper cartons that no one's probably looked at in for years so mean republic here if I didn't reference that to me I care so I do have that academic integrity being applied to my projects that maybe other writers you know just bulldoze their way through because they're like, well, I'm a creative, Of course I take things. That's what I hear. There's that thing around. It's not where you take it from, it's where you take it to, you know, collage and those processes. So that's the back for me. But working across disciplines, you learn a lot about processes and I do think working with other disciplines can be restrictive and they can have stricter ways of working. So, you know, working in communities, working in hospitals, you do sometimes have to taper how you go about delivering projects. And I do think it's important, especially with creative writers working with communities, when you're actually inviting a community to come on board to the project and you're maybe going to use what they're seeing or, you know, asking them to deliver a task, but, you know, and you then you're going to like re-imagine or use very material to create a piece of work.
[00:38:19] What are they get out of it? Because that's kind of that's kind of that extractive thing of like just taken from people and they don't get anything. So I think there's a lot of discussion around that across all creative disciplines and how we work communities and where it's not just for the sake of it. Yeah, not taking advantage and actually you're giving them Slingbox. So I've worked with artists encourage them to with refunds and applications to actually include like giving materials and resources back to an arts group that you work with so they can continue to work onwards. What is they maybe have shaped your ideas for your project or what do they get back? They get the option to keep learning and working without you there and or you'll give them a free workshop or something else that they want to do. So I think it's a very respectful way of working across disciplines. And one of the projects I did I learned a lot about with that is I was commissioned by a research and maternal health research initiative at the university a few years ago to work to create a play and in response to their research into sub-Saharan Africa and Asia around maternal health issues that come on and try to evoke that to an audience in Aberdeen. And I was I know I'm like, I should not have been the person who worked on that, but I actually ended up getting to work with people in hospitals in Zimbabwe and actually getting students here and to get to go over and work in the hospitals from here and work with artists. So it's yeah, that, that, you know, that was I was restricted by the material because I actually had to stick to what they wanted to present.
[00:39:48] And so if they can see the possibility also that maybe they're ethically bound with or are academically bound by the audiences they can reach and things. But I think a lot of STEM subjects conceded the real need to actually engage with the arts to evoke what they're seeing, and ways are more free than they can be or, you know, connect with audiences in a way that they can't because of various reasons, or even just get someone to come in and think outside the box. So, you know, go to the medical device conference I'll be part of is reflecting back on the and the got the drop in hospitals arts project to work on and actually see it's about Scarlet's language but I'm actually showing them how it through looking at the artworks in the room and it speaks behind language and words that can connect with patients and and not just treat their patients as patients, see them as people. Yeah, I know a lot of them do in our medical anyway. We just give them other tools and an auction, so we're all learning from each other, I think in those exchanges and I know your own research will be doing a lot about this. Yeah. Which is why I mean, it's absolutely crucial to be ethical, but it's also important to have these conversations across disciplines so that, you know, people who are probably working within specific disciplines also understand and, you know, it's not just multidisciplinary for the sake of it and me having sort of. Dialogue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's I think I've always learned a lot and then applied it to my practice going forward. If I, you know, you cherry pick what works and you don't practice. And I do think I also got to the question the other way is like am I inhibit in my creativity by wanting too much about how I've got to do certain things within an academic framework.
[00:41:33] And maybe, you know, it's about pushing back, actually changing the framework by doing something that's inside of the scope of it. Absolutely. So, yeah, it's it's a funny one. Yeah, it's interesting. And it's I think it's quite valuable for other researchers listening to you coming from all the experience that you have. I hope so. And it's probably confusing. I always as well project my project. It changes and the rules are different. So yeah, it's really context based, really. Any partnership working in communities and Molly separate it's and then it's personality is tied into that and yeah all these other aspects that come into play. Thanks so much for such a brilliant insight into what's been an incredible journey since your piece Time to Now. It's packed full of lots of engagement and but there's that common thread of identity place, language, community, which I think is really nice to close. Is there any advice you'd like to pass on to people like us? Well, perhaps younger people like us who are approaching the end of the day and then looking to, you know, take the practice beyond that, whether it's, you know, whoever in the school, not just writers. Yeah, I think it's just don't limit yourself to maybe what you thought you're supposed to do with a PhD. And that's what I mean. I or maybe what you thought, you know, I write in response to your academics what to do. You know, I used to think I had to get a book published to be, you know, because of everything else I was doing. I didn't have an award winning book. None of it mattered. And actually I was like, Oh, you had an award winning book and hardly earned any money and, you know, book deals and upfront advance all that don't really exist nowadays.
[00:43:17] And and I think, you know, people don't realise how much earned and not good money. You're too much but like you're doing all these little bits and pieces of other projects or sometimes big commissions come along because you're actually out there engagement with people and doing things in real life rather than behind a computer screen for years for a project that, you know, might never see the light of day. I think, you know, keep four things going, keep your writing up. But also remember, there's a world out there to engage with. And if you're not engaged with it, then what's the point in your research? What's the point in your creative practice if it's not for other people and just yourself? And because otherwise it's just a vanity project and who will care and wherever they get you and essentially negative tend to love your guest and say, just go ahead, go out, collaborate. And yeah, it's I think everything's more of a collaboration than people realise. I think there's a lot of myth about the writer or the academic that aren't actually true. If you look around, especially Aberdeen, where there's a kind of more collaborative ethos, I think that's great. That's a really good point to finish on, to engage with the people and community to practice as wide as you want to take it. Yeah, yeah. It's great speaking to you. You too. Thank you for having me. Thank you. This podcast is brought to you by the University of Aberdeen.